L

Driving Forces for Covalent Assembly of Porphyrins by Selective C–H Bond Activation and Intermolecular Coupling on a Copper Surface

“…Construction of molecular assemblies and networks at surfaces [1,2] provides a highly promising protocol for synthesizing new 2-D materials, delivering new functionalities for biological applications such as sensors and drug delivery [3] and advanced nanotechnology applications in energy harvesting, catalysis and nano-electronic devices [4,5,6]. For many applications, robust networks stabilized by covalent bonds between constituent molecules [1,2,[7][8][9][10][11][12] are technologically more promising, compared to supramolecular networks stabilized by other types of inter-molecular interactions such as H-bonding or van der Waals [13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”

“…For many applications, robust networks stabilized by covalent bonds between constituent molecules [1,2,[7][8][9][10][11][12] are technologically more promising, compared to supramolecular networks stabilized by other types of inter-molecular interactions such as H-bonding or van der Waals [13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. One broadly applicable approach [2] for the on-surface synthesis of complex and diverse covalent structures is to exploit the prevalence of C-H bonds in organic entities and activate them at a surface to drive intermolecular coupling via C-C or C-Metal-C bond formation [2,12,20,21].…”